The ALICE experiment at LHCALICE in a nutshell… In the Big bang cosmological model, our Universe was born 15 billion years ago from a sparkle in the emptiness. Matter as we know it did not exist yet ; only its fundamental blocks such as quarks and gluons were present. But they were so energetic that they could not stay confined inside protons or neutrons and were moving freely (like this). This state of matter is called a quark-gluon plasma.
QGP formation within Big-Bang scenario Re-create and study this primordial state of matter in laboratory is the goal of ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment). The laboratory is strongly involved in the construction and operation of the muon spectrometer, a subsystem of ALICE dedicated to the study of charm and beauty quark production.
For a virtual tour of the ALICE underground pit at LHC (point 2) follow this link (google map). |
